any reason or explanation why carradine walked out of this series? according to networks the ratings where great and a 4th season was planned until carradine unexpectedly walked out
something he never should have done imo probably his biggest mistake in life
The only thing I have heard is that he had received many injuries during the filming of the three previous seasons (in fact I think it was mentioned on the first season DVD docu). Other than that, I dunno. It is a shame though because it is one of the all time greats.
In a way though, better this than to go downhill - leave whilst on top !!
i believe the show would have lasted for atleast for 5 seasons
im sure that season4 would have been very good.. becouse the creators and writers had great ideas....
yes it is defenetly one of the best shows ever
I have the book "Kung Fu:The Book of Caine", which is a complete synopsis of the show, how it began, bios of all stars and many guests, as well as a show by show summary with some back and forth philosophical banter tossed in. A couple of reasons why he left after 3 seasons was that he did NOT want to become typecast as Caine; he still envisioned having a full movie career. Also, like so many other shows, he wanted to go out on top, before the shows got too silly. Come on, the 3rd season ep where he met 3 assasins, one of whom was a sorta swami, making Caine see and fight an apparition of himself, was kind of cheesy. He probably feared it would get worse(remember Lost in Space-started out pretty good, then became camp city-remember the Great Vegetable Rebellion?). So he told them he would not continue after S3.
POSSIBLE SPOILERS
For those that have seen all the eps, didn't the last 4 eps where he finds Danny,loses Danny, finds his nephew, loses the nephew, Finds and joins up with Danny, then helps him get his son back felt a bit rushed in parts, like the writers were told late in S3 that it'll end that season and they better come up with some finale eps to tie up all loose ends.
David claims he decieded to leave the show because he and the producers wanted to end the show before the quailty started to go down. The network wanted the show to continue and was going to force the producers to continue but since David never had a contract he just left the show which effectively killed it. Thats David's story, however on the special features for the season 1 DVD one of the producers said while David likes to tell that story the show was cancelled because the ratings were starting to go down.
yes, i also recall one later episode where he caught a bullet in mid-air, come on now peoples
shareBecause he was unhappy the producers didn't like him showing up on set half-in-the-bag, hallucinating that he was a real martial arts expert and kicking near people's heads and slurring his speech, having a big red nose, smelling like booze and stumbling and falling down a lot and damaging stuff? Oh wait, that was during the shooting of "Kung Fu: The Legend Continues".
shareSomeone in the special features of the first series pointed out David was in almost every scene of every episode of every series :p He was basically burned out and exhausted ('cording to this dude.)
Can't say it's unreasonable after the work he put in, but it is very disappointing. HAving said that I haven't seen the third series yet because it's not available in this country on DVD (almost finished downloading it though), so I can't comment on how it gets cheesy and might have got worse.
Kung fu movies are like porn. There's 1 on 1, then 2 on 1, then a group scene...
I get the impression that David Carradine had basically had enough of the show and the long hours associated with it. It's hard work doing 22 50min+ shows a year. I think he left at the right time as I noticed the quality of the writng started to slip towards the end of the second season.
I've only seen the first two episodes of series 3, but they and the last two of series 2 struck me as a touch silly... somehow irrelevant to the rest of the show. Tis disappointing but I understand, the writing was superb, must be hard to maintain that kind of quality.
Kung fu movies are like porn. There's 1 on 1, then 2 on 1, then a group scene...
The way I heard it the ratings were low during the last season. Like the kung fu craze, it was over.
sharemaybe he wanted to spend more time beating off and cutting off his oxygen supply?
shareI heard he'd had so many injuries he was forced to give up the role. He was, after all, not trained in Kung Fu when he started, using his dance training instead to cover.
share